The Ring and the Crown (The Ring and the Crown 1)

Aelwyn stared at her. “You see the queen as she really is?”

“What do you mean?”

“The courtiers talk about the queen being young and beautiful because to them she is young and beautiful. It is a glamour spell of some sort, but even I cannot see through it,” Aelwyn said.

“Do you mean you do not see her as an old crone, as I do?”

“No, not at all.”

“How strange,” Marie said.

“Perhaps it is your gift.” Aelwyn smiled. “That you can see things others don’t.” She placed a few pins in the princess’s hair to hold it away from her face, thinking it would look more striking that way.

Marie nodded. “I am sorry we lost touch—Mother said I was not to bother you anymore. That you were to make your own decision about your future, without me hounding you. But I am so glad you chose to return to us, instead of staying in Avalon! Was it hard to leave Viviane? And you never told me—is Lanselin as handsome as they say?”

“I too am glad to be back, and my cousin is very handsome indeed,” Aelwyn said lightly. They were cousins in name only, as Lans was the child Viviane had raised as her own, but he was not of her blood. He had taken to reminding her of that when they were together. “I heard your Leo has grown up to be very handsome as well.”

“I suppose. Handsome is as handsome does.” Marie shrugged.

“Why are you so against the idea of Leo? You never liked him, even when we were little,” Aelwyn said, as she waved an amethyst stone over Marie’s hair to create vermilion highlights. “Oh, I remember now—you always preferred the younger one. What was his name again?”

“Wolf,” Marie said softly. “I didn’t ‘prefer’ him. We were friends. Or we used to be, before the Merlin declared war on his family. It was awful during the war; I was always worried he would be killed, although my mother assured me she would only take the royal family hostage, then put them to death if it came down to it. Apparently there’s no need to start a precedent of spilling royal blood. Never mind that they were our friends and distant family, and we shouldn’t murder them.”

“That stands to reason,” Aelwyn nodded. “Now, Leo can’t be too different from his brother, can he?”

“Yes, he is,” Marie said, annoyed. “Wolf is sweet and smart and kind, but everyone thinks he’s a troublemaker, while everyone thinks Leo is perfect.” She made a face in the mirror.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe Leopold is perfect?” Aelwyn smiled, remembering the handsome young man who used to visit.

“Maybe you should marry him, then.” Marie sighed. “I don’t know, there’s just something about him. He’s always so proper and polite and, well, perfect.” Perhaps she did hold it against him a little, because she’d had such a rough start in life.

Aelwyn considered that. “You’re not just saying that because there’s someone else, are you?” she asked.

This time Marie wouldn’t meet her gaze. Aelwyn realized they weren’t twelve years old anymore, passing notes to the young princes who came to court and laughing when one of them tried to kiss them during dancing lessons. Marie was seventeen now, a girl with desires and secrets of her own.

“Marie, who is he?” Aelwyn asked. It had been years, but in the space of a few minutes they had eased back into their familiar intimacy. “You can tell me.”

“There’s no one,” Marie said flatly.

Aelwyn was relieved, until Marie spoke again all in a rush. “It doesn’t matter. He’s gone now. He was a soldier—a member of the Queen’s Guard, actually. But he was sent to the northern front. I don’t know when he’ll be back, or even if he’ll ever return. He just…disappeared…one day. They said he only went on leave, but I wrote to him, and I never got a letter back,” she said, covering her face with her hands.

“Oh, Marie.” Aelwyn finished with the highlights and put the stone back in her bag. “This isn’t good.”

“Like I said, it doesn’t matter now. I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know if he’s all right. I wish someone would tell me what’s happened to him, but no one will.”

Marie had always been so obedient, so agreeable, and Aelwyn felt a pang to see her so low. She loved Marie like a sister, even if she had always been

just a tiny bit jealous and resentful of her position. The court fawned over her, and Marie always got the best of everything—the largest piece of cake, the best cut of meat at the table, the prettiest dresses, the most toys, the largest stack of gifts, the white pony at the stables—while Aelwyn always had to make do with hand-me-downs and scraps, never quite knowing her place, never quite having a real home. She was the bastard daughter of the Merlin, and magicians were not allowed to have children. Her whole existence was a mistake, even if her father never said so. It was only now that she truly understood that Marie was as trapped in her life as she was; that she had little choice or freedom to shape her own destiny. That, like her, she was a prisoner of her fate. “You have to forget about him. You know that, right?”

In answer, Marie kept her face covered with her hands.

“You haven’t seen Leo in years. I know you’ve never liked him much, but you need to give him a chance.”

“I suppose you are right,” Marie sighed. “You know, they call him the Hero of Lamac, because it was he who unleashed the Pandora’s Box that won the battle.”

Aelwyn held the comb in midair and shuddered. Viviane was uninterested in the mortal realm, but even in Avalon they had heard the gruesome news. The stones made by the witch Pandora could conjure the horrors of Gilgamesh, Tartarus, and Doomsday all at once. They were stones that held the power of the Dark, of the Terrible. They had the ability to unleash a million hungry mouths with blades for teeth—monstrous creatures, rotten and soulless. She pitied the soldiers that had been on the battlefield that day. No wonder the empire had agreed to a truce, to a wedding. Anything to erase the memory of that dreadful battle, and—it remained unsaid, but it was clear—anything to make sure it never happened again. “However did the Prussians get their hands on one?” she asked.

“No one knows.” Marie shrugged.